


Ashes and Soot

by yankeetooter



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Bullying, M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:53:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yankeetooter/pseuds/yankeetooter
Summary: Men willing to sacrifice their lives are not always the kindest of souls.
Relationships: Valery Legasov/Boris Shcherbina
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	Ashes and Soot

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to the miners at Chernobyl, who so selflessly dug under the reactor core to install a heat exchanger, lest the core melt through the concrete. This story is fiction.

Boris had gone off on some errand and Valery was restless. For once he was actually caught up on reports, and without Boris' company the trailer seemed lonely. He decided to go outside for a smoke, then wander over to the site where the miners should be all but done installing the heat exchanger.

Valery arrived at the entrance to the dig site, waving to Pikalov who was some way off talking to Glukhov. Entering the shaft, he walked down to where the opened up area should be, hanging electric lights lighting his way through the tunnel. Down near the entrance to the mined out room, a group of miners, mostly unclad, stood around laughing and talking. As Valery walked up they got quiet.

"Hey, boys, look who it is! That uppity scientist who goes around with Mr. Deputy Chairman!" Their tone was not at all respectful, and Valery bristled at the implied insult to Boris.

One miner got up in Valery's face and, poking him in the chest, said, "I hear you've always got a pack of smokes on you. The good stuff! Must be your boyfriend who gets them for you!"

Valery went beet red. He glared at the man, while at the same time endeavoring to keep his gaze high enough to avoid the sight of the man's nakedness.

"Aw! Look at the little guy blush! You've embarrassed him, Ivan!"

"Too bad! Let's see some of those cigarettes, eh?" another poke in the chest, "Us boys have been working hard, sweating our arses off down here, and we'd like a smoke. Surely you don't have a problem with that?"

But Valery very much did have a problem with that. He was tired of being bullied all the time, while at the same time very nervous. The rest of the miners had closed in around him and he was beginning to sweat profusely, not just from the temperature of the tunnel but from the fear gripping him. But he staunchly refused to give up his pack of cigarettes. Boris would never back down like this, and neither would he.

"Aw, look, the little guy's sweating! Is he afraid?"

"Neh, he's hot down here, just like us, but he's too good, too important to go around naked. Maybe we should take some of those fancy fatigues off him, eh?"

Hands reached out, plucking at Valery's jacket, pulling it off him despite his best efforts to prevent them. Valery tried to strike out at the nearest offenders, but one particularly large miner picked him up and shoved him against the metal girder bolstering up the tunnel. In the hot tunnel, the metal of the girder had heated up considerably, and Valery felt it burn his back and shoulders as his nearly bare torso came in contact with it. Only his threadbare vest was between the hot metal and his skin, and it was not much protection.

Valery cried out in pain to the miners' amusement. Mercifully, he was dropped, but multiple hands still pawed at him. Suddenly, a cry went up as his pack of cigarettes and lighter were found. The miners were distracted from their torment of Valery as they passed around the pack of cigarettes and lit up. Unfortunately, Valery's reprieve was only temporary. As they one by one finished smoking, they stubbed out their cigarettes on Valery's bare skin - on his arms, his chest and his neck. Then leaving him where he fell, and with a few good kicks to boot, they ran out of the tunnel, joking amongst themselves. One of them disconnected the lights as they exited, leaving Valery in the dark.

\---------------------

Some ten minutes later, Valery came to his senses. In the dark he had lost all sense of direction. Staggering to a standing position, he placed one hand on the wall of the tunnel and started walking. Still a bit dizzy, he failed to notice the slight downhill slope until suddenly the room opened up. He must have been going in the wrong direction! Catching his breath for a minute before turning around, he squinted at the ceiling over by the far wall. Was there a light there? Something was glowing slightly. As he watched, the glow grew brighter, and he suddenly grasped what he was seeing. It must be the corium melting through from above. Oh no!

Turning around, he dashed blindly back the way he had come! In the dark, he ran smack into the same metal girder from earlier and dropped like a sack of potatoes, lying motionless in the dark.

\--------------------------------

Boris arrived at the miners' site, hoping Valery was there as he wanted to ask him about some of the reports. Just as he was walking up, some ten miners ran from the tunnel, laughing and joking. Oh well, must be their shift was over. Spotting Pikalov, he waved him over and asked him if he had seen Valery.

Pikalov frowned a moment. "Actually, he was here, Boris, and he went into the tunnel a bit ago, I guess to inspect the progress. The men were pretty much finished last time I checked. But you know, I never saw him leave."

Boris was off and running almost before Pikalov had finished his sentence. His sixth sense was going off and he was suddenly very afraid for Valery although he could not have said why. He hesitated when he got to the tunnel entrance and saw it was dark inside.

"Get those lights on, now!" he barked, and a soldier rushed to obey. 

Sprinting down the tunnel, he had almost reached the bottom when he spotted Valery in the dim light. He was lying senseless on the ground with a huge gash on his forehead, his chest bare except for a very holey vest. 

(Strange things pop into our minds sometimes in the midst of the most stressful situations, and Boris could only think, _I thought I got him all new vests and made him throw out the old ones?_ )

Taking Valery in his arms, he began gently slapping his face to try to revive him. At least the gash had mainly stopped bleeding, but he would probably need stitches.

Valery stirred a bit, but seemed half in a trance. When Boris tried to ask him what happened, his only response was a frightened, "The core, Boris, the core!" Then he seemed to slip back into a half-conscious state, although he still kept muttering "The core, the core..." over and over again.

Boris looked towards the back of the room and saw a strange glow coming from the ceiling which was growing bigger by the moment. All of a sudden Valery's words made sense. Scooping up Valery, he sprinted for the tunnel entrance, yelling for the tunnel to be sealed as he ran.

Reaching the outside, he staggered to a low wall and sat Valery atop it while he caught his breath. In the daylight, he was able to better see Valery's condition, although he was puzzled by what he saw. The scientist was covered in soot, not unlike the miners. His fatigue jacket was nowhere in evidence, which was strange. Why would Valery have removed it? His back and shoulders were badly burned and were beginning to blister. But the strangest thing of all was that Valery's vest was full of holes. Upon closer examination. the holes revealed circular burn marks on his skin, with similar burns on his arms. Ashes were also in evidence around the burned fabric of the shirt. Could this have something to do with the radiation?

Flagging down a jeep, Boris rushed with Valery to the medic tent. He sat anxiously beside Valery as the medic cleaned and stitched the gash in Valery's forehead and then examined the burns on his back and shoulders. 

"This is a bad burn. We'll have to keep it clean so it doesn't get infected." Boris nodded, a sick feeling in his stomach. He told the medic of the glow at the end of the tunnel, which was surely the core melting through the concrete.

"Is this...could this be from that? Is it a radiation burn?" Boris steeled himself for the answer he was dreading hearing.

But the medic reassured him. "No, if any of the molten core had dripped on him, it would have burned through to the bone, and most likely killed him. And it can't be radiation burns, or it would not have this pattern, see? Most likely he leaned against something hot down there, although why he didn't immediately move away from it, I don't know. For burns this bad, he must have been leaning against it for some twenty seconds at least. It doesn't make sense."

Boris frowned, thinking. The miners? Could they have...?" His suspicions grew when the medic examined the circular burns on Valery's chest and arms. 

"See these burns?". he said, pointing a few out to Boris, "these aren't from radiation either. Unless I miss my guess, these are cigarette burns. They're just the size and shape a cigarette butt would make, and look! There's cigarette ash on the shirt where the holes are!" He cut off suddenly as Boris jumped up and stalked to the entrance of the medic tent.

Spotting a soldier outside, he said in a quiet, deadly voice, "I need to see General Pikalov and head miner Glukhov immediately. Please escort Glukhov here and ask for Pikalov to come as well."

The soldier ran off immediately. There was no mistaking the deadly rage in Deputy Chairman Shcherbina's voice, and he was glad he was not one of the ones being summoned.

A few minutes later, Pikalov pulled up in a jeep, a soldier escorting Glukhov also exiting the vehicle.

Boris motioned for Pikalov to stand by him as he addressed Glukhov. He wasted no time explaining Valery's injuries and the medic's conclusions. "I want the men on that shift detained until I get to the bottom of this, do you understand, Glukhov?" 

Glukhov nodded, himself angry at his men. "I'll take care of it, Deputy Chairman."

"Yes, you will," Boris hissed at him. Turning to Pikalov, he said with clenched teeth, "General Pikalov, I'd like a contingent of soldiers placed on guard duty for those men. Under no circumstances are those miners to leave the grounds."

Pikalov, himself bristling with anger at Valery's harsh treatment, saluted and went off to take care of Boris' orders. 

\-------------------------

A little while later, Valery was a bit more lucid. In response to Boris' gentle questioning, he related what had happened, tears streaming down his face in embarrassment and shame. He hadn't wanted to convey the humiliation he had suffered under the miners' hands, but Boris insisted, needing to have evidence of their actions. Boris watched as Valery laid back down sobbing, suddenly regretting having made the man relive the experience. As he watched Valery protectively, the medic approached with a hypodermic needle in hand.

"This will help with the pain, and also help him to sleep for awhile," the medic explained. Boris nodded his permission, hoping sleep would ease some of Valery's nightmarish memories.

\--------------------

A few days later, Valery's burns had mainly healed and he was able to be taken back to the hotel. The medic (and Boris) hoped that the more peaceful setting would help Valery more readily get over his trauma, but Boris wasn't so sure. Valery had been sedated much of the time while in the medical tent, but he now needed to come off the morphine, which meant he would be more conscious and more likely to relive the events of a few days ago.

Boris immediately decided to take Valery to his own suite of rooms. He wasn't sure Valery should be alone right now, and he could nurse him back to health more easily if he was close by. He got Valery undressed and tucked him into his own bed, then sat in the chair near the bed, going over some reports needing his signature.

Valery had been asleep for thirty minutes or so when he began having a nightmare. Thrashing around in bed, he began crying out at unseen tormentors, flailing his arms as if to fight them off. Then he started shouting, "The core, the core, the core is melting through!" over and over again.

Boris tried to calm him, to wake him from his nightmare, but nothing was working. Finally, Boris climbed into bed and gathered the frantic Valery into his embrace, holding him firmly and whispering gently into his ear, "You're safe now, Valera, you're alright. I'm here. Your Borja is here and you're safe." Finally he felt Valery relax in his arms, his breathing easing up and his heartbeat gradually slowing and returning to normal. Boris lay there for hours, holding Valery in his arms, while Valery clung to him like a lifeboat in a storm.

\---------------------------

The next day the offending miners were dismissed. They would receive no pay for their last day of work and would receive no benefits from the state. They would be blacklisted and would find it difficult to find other work. Boris wanted to have them shot on the spot, but they most likely wouldn't live for more than a year anyway, and Pikalov advised him to not take such action. 

"I don't know what drives men to such behavior, Boris, and I understand your anger," Pikalov said, "but their actions will catch up with them within the year. Let them go home and be with their families. They will not work for the state again."

Boris nodded, although a dull rage still sat in the pit of his stomach. But Valery was nearly healed and the nightmares had gone away after that first night back in the hotel, so he was willing to listen to Pikalov.


End file.
